


Oh Snap!

by Eoraptor



Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Community: Kim Possible Slash Haven, Gen, Mental Breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 15:20:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5421992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eoraptor/pseuds/Eoraptor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever have one of those days? A lesson on why not to taunt a redhead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rated T for Teen for violence and depictions of mental illness. Kim Possible and related characters property of The Walt Disney Company and Disney Animation. this work is parody and not intended for profit.

It had been a LOOOONG week. And Kim was feeing every caffeine-fueled second of it weighing on her shoulders.

Monday it had been Drakken and Shego attempting to steal the pyramids at Giza. To what end she didn't know, but she had stopped the centuries' old ruins being relocated. On Tuesday, Frugal Lucre showed up, at the high school no less, running a student loan scam, trying to apparently get identities to sell online as well as high interest rates. Wednesday had been a real winner; DNAmy had kidnapped Mister Barkin, intending to do something involving his body and Monkey Fist's stolen and stoned brain. Finding Barkin naked and strapped to a table was something she wished she could bleach from her brain…

Thursday, of course, had been state cheer finals, where on Electronique had come looking for Ron, to gain revenge for leaving her reverse-polarized the previous month.

And the whole week during school, had been finals. Studying like a mad woman, cramming every microgram of ink in every text book she had directly into her frontal lobes while chugging iced mocha lattes and Shock Cola to stay awake and alert in case the kimmunicator should ring.

She'd almost leapt out of her skin when Ron had slammed his locker door, startling her out of a standing nap and thankfully waking her in time for her Geometry 2 final, the last test she had to take for the semester. Ron wasn't fairing much better than her, because when she jumped, he dropped into an exaggerated monkey kung fu pose and made the 'wahhhhhhh' noise he always did when trying to look threatening.

Still, she stumbled into the assigned test room, thanking whatever power there was which watched over sleep-deprived heroines that it was an open book test. She let go a deep sigh and practically fell into the cold plastic desk set.

"Alright, you know the rules, Phones turned off and in your purses or pockets on the floor. No headsets. One scientific calculator which is NOT a smartphone, got that Rieger? No food or drink, one pencil, Number two. Fourty five minutes on my mark." Barkin gave the instructions in his direct manner and the grumbling students began to comply.

Kim unbuckled her kimmunicator watch from her wrist and bent to drop it into her backpack.

And then she ducked for cover when a Henchco Number 5 Intruder Klaxon began sounding right next to her.

It took Kim's fogged, and now adrenaline-blasted brain a moment to register that there were no henchmen baring down on her, and that the room had not turned red with alarm lights. Just a bunch of high school seniors looking at her, some chuckling or giggling at her expense as she found herself amidst a pile of upset desks.

"What's the matter, K?" Bonnie sneered, a mischievous gleam in her icy blue eyes, "Don't like my new ring tone? I must have bumped it accidentally when I tried to mute my phone…"

Now the room did begin pulsing red; not with alarm lighting, but with the blood boiling and pumping right behind the redhead's eyeballs. She placed her hands resolutely beneath her and took several breaths, trying to steady herself and pull it together for the sake of her dignity.

"Oh, it also comes with an 'Extra Alarming feature' too..." Which Bonnie dutifully triggered just as Kim was rising to her knees.

The hundred and forty decibel warning siren caused her to jump, lose her nascent footing, and collapse again beneath the pile of upset desks. This resulted in more outright laughter from the other test-takers, giggling at her expense.

The chuckles and giggles stopped three seconds later when the desks exploded outwards in a spray, some hitting students as they landed, leaving a cleared circle with an enraged Kim Possible standing in the middle.

Bonnie had never seen such a sight outside of an action movie, so she stood stunned and frozen at the sight of the enraged teen before her.

Kim saw nothing but a field of red, with a brunette at its center, still holding the vexing noise maker.

First she executed a perfect windmill evasion. It was meant to deflect punches thrown by two hundred fifty pound steroidal henchmen, so the effect it had on a hundred fifteen pound ballerina was striking. The hand holding the cellphone was snapped to one side hard enough to dislocate her wrist, and also send the phone rocketing across the room, shattering as it perfectly struck the stainless steel institution-grade door handle of the classroom door.

This seemed to be a cue, and everyone else in the room bolted for that same door.

Kim didn't see them, though. She was now standing behind Bonnie Rockwaller.

She used the momentum of the windmill defense to spin completely around. In the process she lifted and kicked out her left leg, hooking it around the brunette's throat. On a larger, stronger opponent, this would have spun Kim into the air and around for the pin. On the unprepared high school student it had the effect of bringing her to the ground with a heavy thud, Kim's thigh locked around her neck.

The furious redhead instantly grabbed Bonnie's outstretched arm, and rotated it with practiced expertise into the locked position, Bonnie's palm facing the ceiling backwards as she looked around, still not entirely certain what had happened.

Kim was in the same position, mentally. It took her a moment to realize that she had her classmate locked in a flawless submission hold, legs scissored around her throat and arm twisted to the point of immobilization, but not yet pain.

Kim growled and shook her head, trying to clear it of the angry red mist that filled her vision. Unfortunately for Bonnie, the first thing that Kim saw with her clearing vision was the shattered remains of Bonnie's vexing smart phone.

A guttural growl filled the nearly empty class room, and Kim's thigh tightened with dark portent over Bonnie's windpipe. The brunette immediately started smacking the floor with her free hand, trying to submit and tap out of whatever it was she had triggered with her joke.

The redhead was having none of it. She had been pushed past her breaking point, and no quarter was going to be given now. She twisted Bonnie's arm further past its locked point, and gleefully felt the dancer buck beneath her body as she felt the tendons twisting all along the suddenly sweaty arm.

Once she was certain she had her nemesis' full and undivided attention, She growled low and hot, giving one extra twist to the trapped arm to ensure Bonnie knew who was in control.

"Now you listen to me, you privileged, petty, snide little bitch," the redhead growled, stretching her own back, tightening the hold even more, feeling Bonnie struggle as her breath was further restricted, "You've pushed and pushed and pushed for five years. You've attacked at virtually every turn, and you've attacked my friends, and even pitted my own family against me more than once."

"I don't know what diseased pit at the back of your head made you decide that I was a worthy target for your attentions, but I've had enough. I've tried ignoring you, I've tried reasoning with you, I've bested you more times than any villain I've ever faced, and I've even tried to be your friend." Kim sneered as she exerted pressure on Bonnie's thumb, making the joint grind as it was stretched to its physical limit.

Her own arms were trembling, only just resisting the urge by that dark part of her to push it past that limit.

Shaking her head, trying to clear it of the voice cheering her on, she fought to remain in control, "But you keep coming back to impart more abuse. Isn't that right?"

When no response was immediately forthcoming, Kim squeezed with her thighs, completely cutting off Bonnie's windpipe and threatening to collapse the blood flow in her neck, "I Said Isn't That Right?"

The brunette, eyes wide with terror, nodded rapidly despite the way her neck was being held between two thighs that felt like hot iron bands around her throat.

Kim eased the pressure off, once more regaining control over the urge to execute a death roll and snap Bonnie's neck. "And now, you decide that it's a good idea to set off an alarm, right in my ear? One that is used by half of the criminals world to tell them that I'm coming? Do you think that was a good idea?"

Bonnie felt Kim's thigh muscle twitch as if to strangle another answer out of her and quickly inhaled as much air as she could, while also rapidly shaking her head no, that it was NOT a good idea.

"Well, I'm here to tell you, right now; you set off the alarm, and here I am." Kim gave the trapped arm a sharp twist, and actually heard the tendons stretching and misaligning in Bonnie's body, even over her pained hiss.

After a long moment of allowing Bonnie to fester within the pain of the submission hold, the redhead continued, "Bonnie, I know seventeen forms of kung fu. I can bench press two of you, and leg press more. In my bag this very moment, there are two grappling hooks with stainless steel penetrating bolts which would pin your spleen six inches into the concrete floor."

Giving Bonnie's arm another twist, delighting in feeling as much as hearing her react to the danger of it being snapped, she continued, "Right this moment, I could twist this arm two degrees further and dislocate or break at least eight different bones, rendering it permanently dysfunctional. Or, I could twist even harder, sheering off the brachial artery and causing you to bleed to death without leaving a single mark on your body. Or, if I was feeling particularly vicious, which I am, I could twist my hips and snap your neck like a twig. Am I making myself understood?"

Bonnie again nodded as much and as rapidly as she could from the pin, terrified eyes on her victim-turned-tormentor.

Kim allowed her another moment to digest all she had just said, and then resumed her diatribe, "Again, I don't know what in good glorious hell possessed you to think I'd make a good victim… And I'm glad I will never be sick enough to know. But I do know this; you've pushed it too far."

The redhead twisted Bonnie's thumb a little further and felt the saddle ligament pop, sliding off of its assigned bone and rendering the girl's right hand temporarily useless, "And now I'm going to start pushing back. The next time you so much as look cross-eyed at me, OR my friends, you're going to lose one of those eyes. If you are PROFOUNDLY stupid enough to do it a second time, I will snatch out the second eye and leave you to linger in your blind misery."

"And," Kim continued, stroking her thumb along a part of Bonnie's arm which she knew would be tingling and burning from nerve pain by now, "If you open your mouth to say anything other than 'Hello Kim, Good Morning, I hope you slept well?' I will rip out your wind pipe, wrap it around your neck, and strangle you to death with it before you have the good fortune to die on your own from blood loss."

She was rewarded with Bonnie's eyes widening to the point of almost popping out of her skull, and she grinned darkly, "Good, you understand. Now remember Bonnie, I have powerful friends. Friends that you don't even know about, ones who wear eye patches and can make you disappear before you even realize there's no floor under your feet. I will know if you've said a cross word or made an ugly glance against anyone I know. You can't hide from me, and you can't hide things from me. Clean up your act or you will live just long enough to regret it."

Kim held still for a long moment, resisting the urge to punitively destroy Bonnie's arm, before finally regaining some semblance of her self and banishing the dark Kim within her back to its cage. She slowly disentangled her legs from around Bonnie's neck, and then viciously snapped Bonnie's thumb back to the right.

It caused the brunette to scream out in pain, but it also reseated her dislocated thumb and tendon. "Now, I am going to go turn myself in for assault and battery. If you're smart, you will admit to playing a prank on me which caused me to snap and suffer a post traumatic incident. If you're not smart… well, I'll be kicked out of school and have plenty of time to figure out which of your feet I want to break every single bone in."

With that, Kim straightened her hair and quietly exited the classroom, leaving the bruised dancer laying, still paralyzed in fear, on the floor amidst the scattered desks.


	2. Chapter 2

It was several hours of near catatonia before Kim finally began to come around to herself once again. The first thing she did was to vomit into the bucket next to her bed.

Once that was out of the way, she got up and walked to the basin. She was in a hospital. It wasn't Middleton General, she knew that building like the back of her hand… which now had a rather large and disreputable-looking tracking device attached to it. Sighing, she sat back on the bed and tried to recall what the heck had happened.

She didn't have a lot of luck with it. She remembered an alarm going off, and then a lot of anger. Her hands automatically clenched, as if holding something tightly in her grasp. An arm…

But as quickly as the thought materialized, it vanished back into the ether.

Looking around, Kim noticed several things. Her room had no clocks, and no windows. The floor was tile rather than industrial carpet. And the bed lacked the usual lanyard to control the TV and lights. The TV was also absent.

"Great… a psych ward." Kim sighed. "What, I was that much a danger to myself?"

"No you were that much a danger to others," came a cool tone from the corner.

"Doctor Director?"

"Yes…" came the reply "They didn't want to put you in Middleton County Jail for fear you would dismantle the place. The only reason you're not restrained now is because you picked apart the first three sets they put on you. You did it out of boredom I think."

"And who is… they?" Kim frowned, looking at her hands again. Once more she could just about sense what had passed through her fingers, but it remained just outside of reach.

"Middleton PD." The director nodded as she stepped into the light. "I take it that you don't remember why you're here?"

The doe-eyed look the eighteen year old gave the spy was confirmation enough of that.

"Well, it's not my place to tell you. I'll leave that to the attending physician." Doctor Director nodded solemnly, "I'm only here as an observer."

Kim frowned firmly, "At least tell me where I am?"

"Upperton University Hospital, high-risk observation ward. Though, I foresee a redesign in its future considering that you're only here because you didn't choose to leave." The Director of Global Justice provided cryptically.

Kim sighed darkly and dropped her head in shame. Oly then did she notice that she was clothed only in her panties and a hospital issue sports bar. "Suicide watch?"

"No, standard intake procedure," Betty acknowledged, "Though frankly, I think they took away your clothes more out of fear of what you could do with the titanium wire reinforcements than what you might do to yourself."

Kim winced, "You make me sound like Hannibal Lector."

"After what you did, Miss Possible, I'd be surprised if someone didn't write a book." The Director shook her head. "But as I said, I'm only here as an observer. And now that you seem to have come back to yourself, my job is done. For now at least."

The director returned to the corner of the room, and was swallowed up by an oculus that opened in the floor and then disappeared as soon as she did. The redhead sighed and looked around herself. Part of her brain instantly began to calculate the best way to escape, but she realized that she must be here for her own good.

Still, by the time the doctor came in three minutes Later, Kim had that many different escape options available to her, even just being in her underwear in a mostly barren room.

Over the next few minutes the psychiatrist gave her a rather clinical account of how she had assaulted a fellow student severely and destroyed a classroom. He also informed her that they had given her a sedative, which probably explained why she couldn't remember much of what she was told she had done, or having been here for seven hours, apparently conscious for most of it.

* * *

She went quietly with the Middleton police officers who came to escort her back to the police station for booking. She was surprised to find her parents waiting for her, and that she was being released to them. On the way out, she overheard from the desk sergeant that it was because they didn't want the jail to riot as criminals tried to take down the great Kim Possible, emphasis on "try."

Despite another sedative to help her sleep, because apparently she was suffering from acute sleep deprivation, Kim didn't rest very well at all. Throughout the night she began to recall some of what she had done, and knew that she had done it. It wasn't some conspiracy or evil plot to drive her insane.

She remembered wanting to rip Bonnie's arm off at the root and beat her to death with it very vividly, and she remembered some of what she had said to the girl on that very subject. A lot of it was still a blur to her though. She shivered, holding herself through the night, not wanting to think about the person who had said those things. Because that person was her.

She wished Ron was here.

* * *

By the morning Ron had been cleared to visit. He didn't look any better than she felt, and couldn't meet her eyes.

Her parents took her before the judge, who declared that she was charged with felony assault and set a trial for a week out.

The rest of the day was a blur to the redhead. Her mother took her to a doctor's appointment with a family therapist, but she tuned most of that out. Daddy didn't know what to say to his daughter, the living weapon, and so mostly flustered with his newspaper. She didn't even see her brothers.

The rest of the week went much like that. Everyone she knew left her alone for the most part. By the following Thursday she was feeling a bit more human, but the pall of an actual criminal trial hung over her head like the Sword of Damocles. She was eighteen, an adult, and not under any alien influences at the time. She knew she was not going to skate by with a slap on the wrist.

* * *

Kim got her first shock on walking into the court room. Bonnie was sitting on the far side of the room, and not looking at anyone. Her left arm was in a sling with a splint on it, and her right wrist was also splinted up. Kim shivered, because while she still couldn't recall the specifics of what she'd done beyond some of the words, she knew she was going to find out.

The court trial was a bit surreal. The first thing Kim did was to stand up and plead guilty. The gallery erupted in murmurs, and one or two outright calls of disbelief. Ron had to be restrained from calling out that Kim had been driven to insanity and was innocent of all charges and obviously it had been a synthoclone who had done it and didn't Bonnie deserve it anyway. He was escorted out until his testimony was needed.

After gaveling for order, the judge accepted her plea and went on with the proceedings. Doctors gave testimony about Bonnie's injuries, erasing any of Kim's hopes that the prima dona was simply playing things up to her own advantage. Both wrists dislocated, left thumb dislocated, multiple strains and sprains all along her left arm. The police report that was entered into evidence also showed the now-fading bruises on her arm and neck in grizzly detail.

Again Kim looked at her own hands. Part of her knew that she could easily have done worse, and it terrified her that she hadn't stopped because she was begged to or was forced to, but simply because she chose to.

Next was more damning evidence. Wade had been subpoenaed.

The teen felt heartsick at the look on her friend's face. She knew he could, at a split-second's notice, have made every stitch of evidence against her disappear. But he didn't, and the voice recording from her kimmunicator brought it all home to her as it was played for the court.

Her words; cold, calculating, demanding. How she laid out in cruel detail the ways in which she could hurt Bonnie, and would do so at a moment's provocation. She remembered feeling that way now. She could recall the temptation to do it; to snap Bonnie's arm with martial precision just to hear her squeal and beg forgiveness. Like there was a second person living inside of her head who would not hesitate for a moment to injure or kill Bonnie for being just an irritant.

She'd felt that person's presence before… a year ago at Bueno Nacho headquarters. The dark Kim who had chased down Shego after the fight was already won, and then beat her in hand to hand combat and kicked her off a building. She'd thought at the time that it was just a lapse, that two maniacal super villains who held the entire world in their hands had driven her to it.

Now, not so much.

Kim looked at Bonnie, but the brunette would not so much as glance at her. And why would she? Kim's voice, in crystal clear digital fidelity, warned her against so much as breathing the same air in the kimmunicator recording. Bonnie got up on the stand and quietly recounted her version of events, how her phone had gone off and how Kim had exploded in a rage and started hurting her in ways she thought only happened in movies.

If Kim weren't so depressed as to her fate, she would have laughed, because Wade's recording already refuted that Bonnie's actions had been innocent, her own voice jeering as she set off her ringtone second time on purpose.

Then the defense of Kim Possible began. The doctors from Upperton U described in detail her break with reality; the catatonic nature with which she had removed her bindings as soon as they were put on, but otherwise sat on the bed, well behaved. The family therapist her mom had hired talked about her insane lifestyle and the pressures that she not only dealt with from the world, but the weights she put on herself.

Wade and Ron both testified about the things that Kim dealt with on a daily basis, including Bonnie's repeated machinations. Kim's Mom and Dad backed that up with an account of the ski trip where Bonnie had purposely set up the entire class chaperone program to embarrass her. Kim had no idea who subpoenaed Ron Rieger to testify about the rigged homecoming election.

Once her court-appointed attorney rested, the judge spoke up.

"Miss Possible. In addition to the testimony entered here today, this court has been inundated with testimonials of your character. In fact, I'm sure the mail room is still sorting through more as we speak. Some of those testimonials come from unimpeachable sources and some… I'm not even at liberty to discuss where they came from. Frankly, anyone who has ever watched the evening news for five minutes knows your character. The letters and documents are just icing on the cake."

"However," The judge continued after a solemn moment, "Character is what we do when no one is looking. And what you did speaks to a flaw in yours, Miss Possible. You've pled guilty to this assault, and audio evidence verifies every chilling word of your violent threats and actions. No matter your past exploits, this court cannot look the other way over such egregious actions."

The magistrate picked up his gavel and slowly rolled it in his hands as he considered all that had been laid before him. "I could empanel a jury and order you to stand trial for sentencing, as you've pled guilty, but I don't see the point. Between the testimony, the character references, and the record of your turning yourself in, remaining incarcerated, and of showing up here when you could easily have fled to any corner of the Earth or beyond demonstrates your willingness to be done with these proceedings."

"You place me in an incredible position Miss Possible, which I understand is quite the norm for you." The judge gave a weary but wry smile as he continued to pontificate, "Were you any other individual, you'd automatically be serving a minimum of six months given the violence of your assault and the threats you made. However, you're not any other person, and your otherwise spotless record would grant you clemency."

The judge leafed through the papers before him again with a sigh, shaking his head, "And it is also clear that this attack was not _entirely_ without provocation. And that is the only reason I did not grant a protective order to the victim. The law does not exist to shield provocateurs from their actions. And believe me, the Middleton School District will be hearing from this court on their policies regarding bullying and they will not like what they will hear."

"Which brings me back to your actions." He sighed again, setting his gavel down and pulling on his glasses, "No matter how provoked you may have felt, life-threatening violence is not a proper response to high school rivalry, Miss Possible. Particularly when you've been trained in forms of combat that I can't even grasp despite the reports provided. You obviously have access to better tools to resolve your problems."

"And speaking of tools, and here I quote, 'two grappling hooks with stainless steel penetrating bolts which would pin your spleen six inches into the concrete.' While the law may not consider these things weapons on school grounds, I think they are hardly safe things to have in a room full of rambunctious teenagers."

The judge reclined slightly in his set, and looked to the vaulted ceilings as though seeking divine guidance, "My problem is this then, Miss Possible. I'm not justified in sentencing you to prison for a single incident of assault given your history. And even if I were, it would be the grossest of judicial negligence to put you in the same place as the very people you have put away. I may as well throw a match on the pool of gasoline that is your life myself."

"Likewise, Community Service is laughable. In four years, you've done more service to this community, and the global community, than I have handed down to all my defendants in twenty years on the bench. Anything I could give you, you would breeze through long before your high school graduation in three months' time. Don't even ask about probation. There's no probation officer in the world who could keep up with tracking you across all seven continents on a weekly basis or verifying you are where you say you are, nor would I order you confined to one jurisdiction and deprive the world of your service, not after New Mexico and those cursed robots that caved my house in on my head."

The magistrate sighed and considered again all the papers before him on the bench, "So what am I to do with you? Nothing in my raft of experience seems fitting or justified in this case. Prison is inappropriate, civil punishment is a joke, and any fine I levy would be paid off instantly by your numerous benefactors, even over your own objections I imagine. And yet, there must be real and lasting consequences over this matter."

After several moments consideration, the Jurist finally sat forward and looked at the Possibles arrayed behind the defendant's table, "So here is my judgment. Kim Possible, you are definitely a threat to others and most likely to yourself as well. However, you are no more a threat than any other highly trained soldier or law enforcement agent. Your skills must be tempered with more judgment and restraint than you have shown in this incident."

Nodding, he picked up a paper and began writing, "Therefore, my first order is that you seek ongoing therapy for your personality flaws and your anger issues. This must include at minimum two weeks of in-patient treatment at a facility approved by this court, and I will strongly suggest that be expanded to ninety days. Some enforced down-time will be of great benefit to you I imagine."

Kim hung her head. She was being ordered to a looney bin. And she deserved it.

"Additionally; on the point of your crime fighting lifestyle. It must be more clearly separated from your regular life. Your extensive arsenal of dangerous weapons is only one facet. Two grappling hooks with stainless steel penetrating bolts which would pin a persons' spleen six inches into the concrete are not the sorts of items which should be carried in a backpack at a high school, even if the law does not strictly consider grappling hooks and sleeping gas to be deadly weapons."

The judge nodded firmly as he wrote on a second piece of paper, "I am issuing a judicial restraining order on this point. The most technologically advanced equipment you can carry on your person when not actively engaged in crime fighting or world saving is one unmodified cellular telephone. No more grappling hooks, and no more illegal electronic surveillance equipment on your wrist. No batons, knives, ropes, pulleys, or class three lasers. I am sure your friends will be happy to keep these things safe until you need them."

Kim sank further into her chair. She already felt naked since the police had confiscated her kimmunicator. And now she was being ordered to not carry so much as a pocket knife to protect the people she loved on a daily basis.

"This order is not limited to Middleton High." The judge clarified as he handed the order to his bailiff, "Should you continue on to college or a trade school, which I cannot imagine you not doing, the same restrictions apply. This court can do nothing about your bare hands, but it can ensure that further weapons are not put into them."

"And finally," The magistrate sat back from his bench slightly to deliver his edict, "This court intends to follow up on this situation to ensure you've learned your lesson. I am scheduling a hearing for six months from now to examine your compliance with my orders. If at that time, I feel you have progressed in your treatment and have been adhering to the restrictions placed on you, we will consider easing your conditions. In a year if the court feels you have been successful in committing to your own treatment and education, we will consider expunging this assault from your record."

The judge looked directly at Kim, leveling his final assessment, "Be clear on this, Miss Possible I am extending to you an olive branch. And I will not tolerate any deviation in your accepting it. If any shadow of this incident is repeated, this court or another will see you are thrown in with the likes of the people you help us to stop and you will be treated no differently from them. Am I understood?"

"Y- yes your honour," Kim's voice broke slightly as she nodded her ascent to the terms. "Th- thank you for this chance."

"Good. This court stands adjourned."

* * *

Outside, Kim felt ambivalent. She was not going to be locked away like the monster she was, but her life stood drastically changed. A convicted felon at eighteen. After several moments fending off her friends and her family and cadre of reporters, Kim felt her sanity fraying at the edges. The dark Kim whispered seductively into her ear to make an example of that nosey cameraman and they would all back off; and wouldn't it be easy to break off that telephoto lens and do anatomically painful things with it?

Instead, the redhead took advantage of the fact that she was no longer under arrest or probation and just got out of there. On foot. It took her two blocks to shake the last of the reporters, but she managed to do it without violating the judge's orders.

And then her day just went to hell.

"Mmmmm, Kimmie kimmie kimmie… You bad girl…" came another dangerously seductive purr.

For a moment she was certain she'd again lost her fight to hold on to reality and that she was hearing from her own demons.

Then she realized that the purr was not her own voice. Shego was perched in a tree, looking down on her.

"I knew you were a hard ass underneath," the villainess dropped down from the tree, shaking her head, "But threatening to kill a girl in the middle of a classroom just for pissing you off? Damn that makes the time I broke Hego's jaw for spying on my first lesbian encounter seem like Candyland."

Kim flinched and trembled. Because right now she could imagine again doing things to Bonnie for such provocations. She refocused her anger on the real threat before her and barely contained the snarl, "Get out of my face, Shego… believe me, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

"Oh, I've met you when you're Angry, She-Hulk…" Shego casually lifted up the leg of her catsuit, pointing to a scar running up her left calf, "the court thinks you arrested me… but I remember having a building dropped on my ass while trying to run away."

The redhead clenched her fists repeatedly, trying to will away the crimson mist filling her vision, "What do you want Shego?"

"Oh, I thought I'd come and poke the bear," the evil woman smirked as she let the skin tight leg of her suit slide back down.

"Shego, if you have a death wish, go have someone else fill it." The felon snarled, for one moment feeling glad that she didn't have any of her gadgets on her as a vision of shooting the vexing woman in the mouth with the grapple gun flashed through her mind.

"Actually," Shego sighed a bit, leaning up against a wrought iron fence, "I'm here to do my civic duty."

"…which is?" Kim growled darkly, eyes clenched shut as she worked to keep control of herself after the longest two weeks of her life.

"It's a public service announcement," the villainess quipped, "The judge ordered you to get help. Do it."

Kim's eyes flew open at the flippant tone and she very nearly stalked towards Shego, her foot twitching against the pavement to take that first portentous step, "What's it to you?"

"Simple Princess… You're on the same path I was. Get off of it."

"Why?" She glared, all better instinct to accept the good advice burning away in the face of who was delivering it.

After a long moment of looking anywhere but at the enraged redhead, Shego sighed, "Because you fucking scare me. I turned evil because people pissed me off too and bad guys get to hurt people for doing that shit. But I just steal things and occasionally beat up a cop or a hero or a hench. You? This is the second time in a year you've nearly killed someone over having your titties twisted. People don't typically get a third ' _almost'_ in a situation like that."

Kim stopped, some of her anger cooling on the apparently knowledgeable warning. After a moment she gritted out a question, "And why do you care?"

"Self-preservation, Pumpkin…" the villainess tossed off, "If you're going to kill anyone, it's likely to be me or my boss... me _and_ my boss most likely. So… Get. Help."

Clawing a hand irritably down her face, Kim did her best to process the advice. Finally, she looked up, eyeing the themed villainess, "Were… were you in the courtroom?"

"No… you think a wanted felon just walks into a packed courthouse?" She smirked, lifting her eyebrow rakishly, "Court TV, dumbass."

Kim's temper exploded and she let swing with a right hook, but Shego was already gone, just the scent of Ozone and irritation left in her wake.

The redhead decided to go and find her parents and get checked in to that clinic.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN; this has been buzzing around my head for a few weeks, but last night it just jelled. Hope you enjoy the repercussions of Kim's actions.
> 
> REVIEWS equal LOVE


	3. Chapter 3

Kim shook her head hard, trying to banish away the other. The darker version of herself who had used the distraction of a mission to come out to play. She should have known something was wrong from the start when she snap-kicked a henchman into a wall and didn't stop to check him for cranial trauma. Self-diagnosis was apparently not her strongest personality trait.

But adrenaline and a ticking time bomb had forced her to ignore her lower impulses and drive on to her goal; one blue madman.

That blue madman was subdued right now. She had looped and dashed and chased around him without end, right up until he had knotted himself into a cocoon of his own green plant vines. How long he might stay that way was anyone's guess. Sooner or later he would probably figure out how to will the tendrils to unknot themselves or something.

But for right now he was merely watching the redhead as she watched anything but him. He knew something was up; but exactly what it was he could not say, and his scientific curiosity was piqued by the change in pattern.

Ron was elsewhere in the building, helping Rufus to disarm the giant foam-rubber bomb that was at the heart of the latest scheme. Kim tried everything she could to drive away her darker, bloodthirsty impulses, the feelings she had personified as the dark-kim. Without her blond boyfriend though, there was little to distract her from Drakken's plotting nature.

Therapy had been a major bust for the redhead. The first stop was a traditional twelve step program aimed at people with anger management problems.

Step one was easy. She already knew she had a problem.

It was the steps that came after that where things started to break down… For one thing, she had seen far too many strange things over the past few years to believe there was a power greater than hers to lend her strength or guidance. It wasn't arrogance on her part; so much as a stark realization that if such a being did exist, it wouldn't need people like her around to keep the world spinning since that was kind of the nature of being a higher power. And aside from Bonnie, who had probably gotten what she deserved anyways, she had no one to apologize to: She handed out righteous defeats, not drunken beatings or angry mayhem.

Failing repeatedly at step two of a recovery process only left her wildly frustrated in three weeks of in-patient theraputical treatment. And it led to some explosively heated debates in her group sessions at the court mandated therapy locale. Well for everyone else they were explosively heated… for Kim Possible it barely rated a warm-up routine as she lit the fuse and others took care of the detonation.

A different rehabilitation facility and a different approach netted no better results. Being aimed at soldiers and municipal first responders, her parents and the courts thought it might be a better fit for her than a strictly management-based approach. Once again the therapy failed to take hold. So much of dealing with the PTSD and hyper vigilance was targeted at winding down and learning to deal with distorted thinking.

The problem was that, for the rest of her group-mates, their boyfriend or a stranger on the street being revealed as a gel-filled monster which might explode in their arms, taking everything they held dear with it was a 'cognitive distortion,' even for soldiers who had seen time in the Middle East. For Kim Possible it was quite literally just another day at the office. Just last week Frugal Lucer had turned expired packets of Diablo Sauce into IEDs that burned through tank armor like acid burned through tissue paper.

So it was nigh-impossible for the redhead to accept how to identify distorted thinking when, for her, it was that very acceptance which was the distortion. This time, though, the teen gave in to a different personality flaw… She allowed her OCD to teach her to fake her way convincingly through the therapy. It was no more difficult than learning a new cheer routine to go through the motions of identifying distorted thinking and over-reactions and what might be high-stress environments to avoid; and to smile cheerily while doing so.

She wasn't sure if the folks at the camp actually believed she had come away from therapy a better and healed person; or if they just wanted the explosive redhead out of their groups and not agitating other people they _could_ still help. With her mind-bending scenarios about how lunch at a taco hut was a high threat environment after all and not a cognitive distortion she was certainly not helping others overcome their issues.

The next few weeks of her life were no better. With graduation and an alien invasion come and gone, Kim felt like she was walking a knife edge of tension. Having Ron step up finally and become a somewhat capable world saver helped alleviate some of her tension… but it was only replaced by new stressors. At what point would the aliens return for a third visit? And how many weapons would they bring this time?

Now the very sky itself held threats and tension and she had Wade connect her cellphone to a few NASA apps for monitoring purposes, skirting her legal injunction by only using market apps on a smart phone, though doing so in a way that most sane smart phone users would never dream. Most people used Giggle Skyscape to stargaze; Kim Possible was using it to chart entry vectors for alien warcruisers.

But her one solace was that, through all of it, her darker impulses stayed submerged. Through all the stress of six and a half weeks of in-patient (or perhaps impatient) treatment, and being deprived of even her simplest laser lipstick, Kim had kept a stiff upper lip and a cheerful smile and never once threatened to strangle anyone with their own windpipes. In fact, she only once felt the impulse to even give someone a stern talking to.

It seemed like good old Kim was back in control, and her brief stay in the criminal justice system was no more than happenstance. The farther removed from it she became, the better she became at forgetting that the dark-kim even existed. She was back on top of saving the world with a thank you and a big smile.

Kim didn't realize it, until right this very moment, but she hadn't gotten better at all. All she'd gotten was the knowledge on how to be a convincing liar, to herself and to the court appointed observer.

Because right now, her vision was red, and her blood was pounding like a bass drum in her ears, and a seductive voice was whispering to her about what she ought to do with that wriggling third tendril on the left and the broken light fixture above her head. And how if she did that; it would solve a lot of people a lot of problems down the line.

And it was worse because she also knew it wasn't distorted or dysfunctional thinking. Doing away with Drakken would make the lives of hundreds of people directly easier, she knew from experience. Thousands, millions, maybe even billions more indirectly for simply not having to be imperiled by him on a monthly basis.

She tried to stop thinking about that. It didn't help her any to know whether she was lucid or psychotic, or something in between. It sure didn't quiet the impulse to grab the wet, salty, and electrically conductive vine and jam it into the live lamp socket.

And nothing else she'd heard at the two therapy camps was remotely quieting the voice or the impulses either. Rational thought was not dissuading or even holding at bay the irrational desires… deep breathing and meditation, and even rubbing the pulse point on the inside of her wrist was doing nothing to slow her heart or ease the reactions of her flesh to snap at and crush any moving thing near her… Obviously there was no higher power to call on for her strength or solace, or she wouldn't have had to be here in the first place.

Hell, if anything, she WAS the higher power and people ought to be praying to _her_ for their salvation and strength. She was the one here dealing with this crap like a benevolent God should.

"No, that is DEFINITELY distorted." Kim muttered at herself, pushing a finger along the inside of her eyebrow, trying to ease her pulse with more biofeedback and acupressure and sighing raggedly.

"What?" Drakken keened, trying to understand what he was listening to through the half-muttered conversation as he watched the teen pace.

"Shut up!" She snapped at him verbally and physically, pointing a damning finger at the bundle of green vines and blue skin with a faint quaver.

He dutifully complied and resumed watching her in silence.

The redhead scowled, shaking her head hard, as though to dislodge the red mist that was filling her vision. She had every right to be angry like this. Drakken was worse that Bonnie. Once put in her place, Bonnie had not acted up again in the three months leading to graduation… well save whining about not having enough time with her new boyfriend; but that was more a cry for help than an irritant.

Drakken, well he had been at this for years… longer than Kim herself had even! He had been a twisted mad genius for at least a decade, and maybe longer. He still held a grudge against her dad going back to the eighties for cripes sake! What did she have to do to get him to stop; stop before she did something that he would regret her doing?

Glaring again at the blue imbecile, she pressed her index finger along her brow in an almost panicky gesture; as though rubbing the little bundle of blood vessels and nerves there was the only thing keeping her from hoisting him on a spit for Shego to roast up like so much kabob.

Speaking of, where was Shego? Kim hadn't seen her since she had manhandled the second Henchman through the door… it wasn't like the emerald malcontent to duck out on a fight without so much as throwing a punch.

Shaking her head, the teen refocused as best as she could. She could deal with the mercenary muscle later.

Growling with frustration, Kim threw her massaging hand away from her body in disgust and glared daggers at the scientist, noticing his self-bindings were beginning to writhe and try to unknot.

"Enough of this!" she spat, fed up in equal amounts with her own dysfunction and with Drakken's machinations.

If she couldn't lie away or will away the dark-self inside her, she would just have to expend it somehow.

Stalking slowly to the blue and green madman, she seized the wiggling tendril which had been vexing her for the past five minutes. Squeezing it hard she held it aloft, but not making her intensions with it clear yet, the heroine hissed, "Do I scare you, Drakken?"

Normally his response would have been an instantaneous and emphatic NO!, but there was a dangerous glint in the redhead's green eyes that reminded him entirely too much of the one his own enforcer got from time to time. So he merely forced himself to shake his head rather than issuing his normal vehement denials in the face of the teen.

"Well you should be scared." She sneered, glaring at the maniac. "I'm Sure Shego told you about my little run in with the law?"

When Drakken shook his head and showed some sort of confusion and curiosity, Kim deigned to educate him, "Really? She didn't tell you about it? I'm surprised… _Shocked_ even."

She let that word hang in the air, but the blue man seemed to miss its intent entirely. She continued, "You see, I had a little incident. Someone pushed me a little too far. It was just after you tried to steal the pyramids actually. Someone just found a button in me… and they kept pressing… and pressing… and pressing it… until I…"

"SNAPPED." Her thumb snapped the crisp green tip of the tendril she had ahold of.

Drakken didn't feel it. The plant was symbiotic to him, not an actual part of his body. But clearly he was disturbed by the display if the little jerk he gave was any indication.

"…and do you know what happened to this person? This civilian who pushed me a little too far?" Kim looked at the green ooze slowly forming around the broken plant stem with mild apathy, "I beat the ever-loving hell out of her. I dislocated both her wrists and her left shoulder and told her that if she ever did it again, I would do things to her that… well… You're a supervillain, I'm sure you can use your imagination."

Kim slowly raised her hand, the one with the broken vine, upwards, making her intention clear, "Now, she was just a civilian. And for that I was given probation and anger management counseling. A year or more. Now you, on the other hand… You are a dangerous arch criminal. One whom I was contracted by a major law enforcement agency to come and stop. So I think you can see where I am going with this."

"That, erm, ah… it would be a horrendous breach of justice to abuse my civil rights?" Drakken tried to point out as he realized that the teen may indeed be unhinged and he had let her bind him completely up with his own tendrils.

"Oh… oh no," Kim gave a dark, morose giggle, "Quite the opposite. In fact, in some circles there has even been a push to have you and Shego declared not-human owing to your mutations. Meaning at least a few wouldn't even blink if I ended your miserable life here and now; because you technically have to be human to have human rights. And even those who did blink would inevitably come to the conclusion that I was justified."

Kim raised the now twitching plant tentacle even closer to the broken light socket, her dark smirk turning into a deadly glare and she squeezed the vine hard, wishing the madman could feel any pain from it, "So you can imagine I am righteously put off at having to deal with you for the seventy-third time in five years when others would have ended you long ago!"

After a long and electric moment, the heroine slowly lowered the slick, wet vine away from the light fixture. She did not yet release it entirely, however, "But… I'm going to let you go."

"That's very… very righteous of you," Drakken demurred disgustedly, his pride offended at the magnanimous display which proved how superior his mercilessness was to even her unhinged heroic nature.

His sneer disappeared when Kim's hand jerked skyward with the tentacle once more, "On One Condition!"

Once she was assured of his undivided attention again, she resumed, "If you ever… and I mean EVER… pick up so much as a test tube again with the intention of making anything more fiendish than a chocolate malt I will find you."

She slowly lowered the vine again as she reigned herself in, feeling as much as seeing her vision go from a red mist to the same sort of unbroken crimson field it had been when she had snapped Bonnie's thumb off the joint; fighting back against the darkest impulses to maintain some control.

"And when I find you," she continued in a deadly whisper, walking a knife edge between foul word and dark deed, "I will skin you alive, just to see how deep the blue goes, and how far the roots grow under your flesh. And once I have satisfied that curiosity, I will sew up your bloody, half-dead carcass inside of a synthodrone. And I will leave you there, in that wretched crippled state, to languish until you either die, or someone finally comes looking, curious what ever happened to the fiendish Doctor Drakken."

She let the vine in her grasp drop in dark portent with that declaration, fixing the madman with her glare. "Do I make myself clear?"

A swallow and a nod were all the man-child could muster as his hear hammered in his ears and sweat ran down his cerulean forehead.

"Good, because as you can see, Shego already knows all this and had the good sense to cut fence and run when she saw me coming." She indicated the suspiciously empty laboratory. "Why she never told you is beyond me, but now you know. And you know I will make good on it because frankly, at this point, I have documented anger issues and nothing left to lose by executing a subhuman beast who threatens the world on a regular basis. Now get out of my sight before I forget my righteous and heroic nature completely."

Drakken somehow magically untangled himself from his self-inflicted bindings and ran from the laboratory as fast as his legs could carry him.

On hearing the pitter patter of his slick-soled shoes fade fin the distance, Kim let go a long, hard breath from her lungs. With it went much of the red mist filling her vision, and the pounding inside her ears and in her fists slowly eased.

She didn't know if exercising the demon had exorcised it, or if she simply was coming down off the adrenaline high, but at this point she would take either one. It was more effective than either the twelve steps of cognitive realignment had been in making her feel in control of herself; and for that she was grateful.

Maybe she just needed to accept that part of her, rather than viewing it as a problem to be managed. Perhaps it was simply a part of her personality to be integrated instead.

Then she heard the soft tap-tap of a set of boots landing on the floor in front of her. Looking up from her internal estimations, she saw she had been wrong on one count at least.

Shego had not run away after all.

"You were going to electrocute him, weren't you." It wasn't a question.

"…No, but believe me, the thought crossed my mind." Kim sighed deeply, looking in a considering manner at the translucent green slime that clung to her gloved hand.

The confession seemed to lighten her heart a bit as she looked up. Admitting that she wouldn't actually have killed him at this moment helped to ease her mind, if ever so slightly.

"And the rest of it? Will you hunt him down and finish it if he decides to test your good will?"

Kim watched the villainess, noting that she was carefully staying clear of grappling distance as they spoke. "He best not try me. I'm done with being pushed by people who think they know my better nature."

Shego watched the angry girl before her and shook her head, "I take it court mandated rehab didn't help. Shady Acers and Whispering Pines completely failed you."

The heroine shook her head, "No… I think they did everything they could. But it's like those war hospitals in 1915… you know, the ones that executed people for fleeing from the trenches instead of realizing that they had crippling PTSD? They just don't know how to handle my… my issues."

"And how did you know where I was, anyway? We went to a lot of trouble to keep that a secret… I even dyed my hair and used bronzer to disguise myself so supervillains like you wouldn't try to hunt me down and endanger a hospital full of sick people." Kim's fists tightened as she glared at the evil lieutenant, her suit glowing to life again in response to her emotions.

Shego had the good sense to hold up her hands and demonstrate she was not a threat, "I told you before, Princess of Darkness… self-preservation instincts. If I know where you are, then I know you haven't gone walkabout and decided to make me your next target."

"And will I need to come after you?" the redhead took a step at the taller woman irritably.

"Yeah… if you don't mind, I think I'll take the deal you offered Drakken." She shook her head quickly, "Between my evil earnings, and the license fees I earn off my image, I don't need to steal any more to make a living. Corporate evil will do just fine."

"Who says I would offer you the same deal?" Kim glared eyes and suit pulsing in sympathy with her rising fury, "you're the dangerous one. Without you, he never would have got half as far."

Shego paled. She had always assumed Possible had failed to recognize that little aspect of the Drakken-Shego alliance. Knowing she needed to do something, anything to make herself more human and less of a threat, she quickly redirected, "…so it's true? I'm not even human? Not worthy of a trial and sentencing?"

It had the desired effect, Kim held herself at bay, if only just. Others might be willing to write living breathing people off as little better than animals to be put down on sight, but she was not one of those people. Not even in her darkest moments.

She took a breath and let it go very slowly, trying to visualize the angry red cloud of emotions flowing out of her with the exhalation, "From me? No, it's not true. But I'm not the one in charge, Shego. And it's not something I made up. I think the only reason no one has acted on it yet is that it would have to extend to your brothers and my boyfriend as well. So you might think of them before you decide just how evil you'll be in… retirement."

"And would you stand on their side?" Shego took a calculated risk, betting that challenging Kim's better instincts was better than her usual tact of antagonizing her.

"I… don't know Shego…" the heroine shook her head, trying to process the question without inviting in the dark visions of a few moments earlier. "All I know is, if I had dealt with you _absolutely_ earlier. Drakken never would have launched the Diablobots."

"Nor would he have been on the alien space ship to help concoct our daring human rebellion," she pointed out, a hint of snark sneaking into her voice.

"Which is the only reason he ran out of here for someone else to capture," Kim pointedly indicated, "His lone redeeming act. We're done here. If you poke the bear any more I won't be responsible for myself. And the courts won't hold me responsible either."

"Yeah, I know… I got the justifiable homicide point while you were putting the fear of Kim into Drakken." Whether she meant it in jest or seriousness was unclear, as Shego turned walked to a hoverpod, never quite turning her back on the heroine standing in the ruined lair.

The redhead watched her go and sighed. She had a lot to think about now, and she needed to do it somewhere where dark visions of being someone worthy of being feared didn't enter into the matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: So I wrote this last bit almost two years ago, Jan 2014 (the rest was done much earlier). At the time I was not happy with the tone of the last few paragraphs, so I did not post it publically beyond the Slash Haven. However, after reading a few other things this week, I desiced to give it another going-over and got it to be a bit more satisfying. So enjoy, and remember: REVIEWS = LOVE

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a fan-issued challenge at KPSlashhaven.net


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